Categories: OLD Media Moves

Financial news and the use of social media

Ellie Behling of eMediaVitals.com writes about the panel at the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week that discussed how the financial news media use Twitter and social media.

Behling writes, “In some ways, financial news sites have been more forward-thinking in digital and social than one might expect. After all, an affluent audience tending to be early adopters of devices like the iPad have made traditional financial sites focus on a digital strategy. While a financial reporter at my previous job, I learned quickly that financial folks love to tweet.

“At the same time, many financial media sites move forward in much more orchestrated and constrained ways than other media outlets — not unlike the firms they cover, which often have to be cautious for compliance concerns.

“Take Bloomberg, which recently made its first social media hire in Robert Harles as the company’s global head of social media. Harles calls social media at Bloomberg an ‘experiment’ in figuring out how to inject social media into a company with a history of accuracy.

“‘My first objective is to do no harm,’ he said. You can ignore social media or you can own it, he added, and so Harles wants to own it, figuring out how to best incorporate social media for Bloomberg’s customers. He also said he wants to involve the content producers in the process. ‘I cast my role as a catalyst,’ he said.”

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Prescott Shibles says:
February 9, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Thanks for the link to eMedia Vitals!
I'm amazed at how some publishers are queasy about social media and mention "doing no harm" as the primary objective while others have realized that it's an essential job function. NYT, for example, actually got rid of the social media position:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/110111/why-the-new-york-times-eliminated-its-social-media-editor-position/
I think it reflects the way a lot of companies handle disruptive technologies. We did a piece on print/online integration a year ago, and I think there's a lot to apply to social media as well:
http://emediavitals.com/article/17/printonline-integration-what-s-right-mix
Best,
Prescott Shibles
CEO, eMedia Vitals